


When People Go

by jumpfall



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag: 2x09 (Asterisk), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumpfall/pseuds/jumpfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike deals with the fallout of 2x09 with his friends by his side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When People Go

**Author's Note:**

> The bulk of this fic was written last winter, when my own Grandmother passed away. It's been tweaked to fit canon circumstances, but the bare bones are the same.
> 
> The title comes from Craig Cardiff's song of the same name.

The nursing home calls again in the evening. This time it's in a personal capacity rather than a professional one, because Mike knows every single one of the caregivers on his Grandma's floor by name and they know him in turn. Carol is the one making the call, Carol who sends him a weekly update, Carol who keeps a deck of cards stashed in the receptionist's desk for when Grandma wants to kick his ass at poker.

Wanted. He's – she's--.

There's a grief counselor who helped her, Carol tells him. The number's his if he wants it.

He hangs up and he sits down, and he wonders what it is he is supposed to do now.

_-_

The first night is easy, and that's what makes it hard.

He is calm, and hates himself for it. He thinks about how this will play out at work, and hates himself for it. He sleeps, and hates himself for it.  He wasn't there, and he hates himself for that most of all.

In the end, he gets out of bed when the alarm clock goes off at a quarter past six. Showers under the hot water until it feels like a layer of dirt has been scalded off. Picks up a coffee on his way into work. The same as he has every other day this week.

Harvey's in his office by the time Mike makes it in. Mike watches him closely as he circles past on the way to his cubicle, willing his boss not to look up. His loss feels painfully visible, laid bare for the world to see when it is the one thing in the world he most wishes to keep private. He's not sure if he wants Harvey to see it or not.

Louis and Norma can be found talking in hushed tones, holed up inside Louis' office. Rachel moves to stand when she spies him, but stays where she is when Mike avoids eye contact. In the bullpen, Louise is asleep at her desk, drooling on a file folder. Mike exchanges a look with Harold, and they quietly swap it out for the blazer draped over the back of her chair.

Just another day in the office, no different than any other. The best woman Mike has ever known has moved on to bigger and better things, and the world just keeps turning as if nothing even happened? When he sits down at his desk, he feels achingly small and incredibly insignificant.

Donna drops by just after nine with a message from Harvey. He holds his breath when he first sees her shadow drop over the pool of light his desk lamp casts, sure that she will take one look at him at _know_ , but she simply tells him that the financials will be arriving by courier at ten and moves along.

Mike thanks her for the information, makes a note of it, and watches her leave.

He feels vaguely sick.

-

Harvey doesn't read it in Mike's stance, or his expression, or the subdued way he hands over the information he has collated since they last talked. It gives Mike pause and time to weigh his options. He could hand Harvey the papers to sign for his bereavement leave. He could take a step back from Norman LLC's 2008 M-3 filing and indulge in how even the smallest things remind him of her.  (For example, Harvey's left-handed. She was born that way naturally, but in an era where that was discouraged in school and forced to write with her right.) That's sure to open the floodgates.

He could not tell Harvey at all, and see how long it takes him to put the pieces together.

In the end, he decides to say it upfront.

"Harvey, I need to talk to you."

Harvey doesn't any questions when Mike tells him, which is kind of surprising. Mike has many, among them 'how long has this been coming?' and 'was this her time?' and 'why?' He wasn't ready for it, but this isn't something he could ever see himself being ready for.

"Mike…" Harvey says quietly, sentiment laid bare in the space between them that Harvey closes, shoulders bent low and hands clasped loosely between his knees as he leans in. Mike is a rock, okay, spinal cord of granite and tear ducts of marble, but Harvey's eyes are impossibly warm and sad and it fucking breaks Mike. He becomes aware of the faint smell of Harvey's aftershave when a warm arm drapes itself around his shoulders, disregards it as soon as he has catalogued it, narrowing his focus to the square tile his right shoe rests on, counting his breaths.

Harvey doesn't say 'I'm sorry', and that is probably for the best. Mike doesn't need to hear what he already thinks, already knows deep in his bones. He just needs somebody to be there when the person he wants most at that moment is unable to.

-

Mike tries to take the day and Harvey secures the week before he can get to his feet again, leaving the door open for further time should either of them deem it necessary. Someone has seen something of what occurred in Harvey's office, because his return to the bullpen results in the only synchronized action from the associates that Pearson Hardman will witness for another six months, when Greg will knock over his coffee and sacrifice his Blackberry to save Jessica's files, resulting in a wince so sympathetic that it will resonant through the lower echelons right down to the mailmen.

The associates are not nearly so tactful now. The resounding deer in the headlights freeze draws a laugh from Mike. That seems to break the ice, and Louise smiles warmly at him, gesturing him over to Harold's screen where one of the interns and four of the associates are precisely photoshopping Monopoly-style mustaches onto his wallpaper.

"He left his computer unlocked," the eighteen-year old sitting in the chair says without looking up, tapping at the arrow key until the layer rotates into place at a ridiculous angle.

Harold hulks out when he returns to find what they've done, sending the associates scattering and leaving Mike and the kid at the screen looking incredibly guilty. In the end, it's worth it because it's the only time Mike laughs that day.

-

Harvey wears his very best suit to the funeral. Mike wears his oldest, the jacket a scratchy wool blend that has faded from black to a worn grey over the years. She bought it for him his first year of college, still beaming with pride over her grandson and his bright future.

The memory doesn't sting nearly as much as he expects it to. When he closes his eyes he can still see her smile and hear the praise in her voice as she chatted up the shopkeeper. It gets him through having to play host, greeting each mourner in turn and holding up under the pitying smiles they give him. He's the only Ross left now, the youngest and the oldest, patriarch and heir in turn.

With Rachel given some of the arrangements to handle, Donna takes on the task of faithfully slipping him the good booze in new and increasingly inventive ways. It steadies his nerves and Harvey steadies his feet, stepping in to make small talk when Mike's lips go numb and his eyes itch, attention drawn to the slideshow on repeat in the gathering room like a magnet.

It's been a long time since he saw photos of his grandfather, but there the two of them are. The black and white stills depict their romance in reverse, from their honeymoon in Egypt to the traditional wedding photo to the look on his face when she pushed him into a pool just moments before he proposed.

He's known it was coming for awhile now, prepared for this moment, but it _aches._

He gives the eulogy from memory, the paper copy shredded in his pocket out of either despair or anger. He's not sure which yet.

The collage covers her memories but it's missed her spirit, so he fills them in. He tells them about her aversion to any food artificially coloured blue, her inexplicable ability to produce pitch-perfect pancakes but botch the eggs every time, and her crush on Anderson Cooper. She had sworn him to secrecy on that one, but he thinks she'll forgive him this moment, because the crowd laughs and the fisherman's knot in his stomach loosens just slightly. He speaks until he's hoarse, and his voice cracks on her name.

"Edith Ross, may you rest in peace," he says. His vision sort of grays after that, but then there's a guiding hand and a chair to collapse into. Rachel's on one side and Harvey on the other, but when someone squeezes his shoulder, he knows it's neither one of them.

"Hey, Trev. Thanks for coming."

Trevor's an asshole who cost Mike the plausible deniability of his lie, but they have lines, Trevor and he. Edith Ross cooked him many a meal, drove him to many a practice, and kept him on the straight and narrow longer than anyone else managed to. Mike can hardly fault him for grieving her too.

-

After, there are things to be done. There is a reception and a burial and a will. These are things Mike knows how to do. But when the tears have been shed and the memories reminisced upon and the people retreated to grieve privately, there is nothing. There is this day and the next and an endless stream of tomorrows in which Mike knows that he is here and she isn't.

Somewhere in the back of the mind, he thought that after losing his parents it would be easier this time around. He remembers what he understands, and he thought he'd finally understood that it gets easier, with time. That one day, he will remember –

> \-- _they 're curled up on the couch with a VHS tape in the player, a bowl of popcorn nestled in the space between Mike and his mother, fingers greasy with buttered kernels and the lights down low --_
> 
> _\-- he is six, and sick, and his father will sing lullabies to him softly if he asks --_
> 
> _\-- Mike doesn't like thunderstorms, he really doesn't, but when his Grandma pulls all the cushions off the couch and builds a fort with him, maybe – maybe – they aren't quite so bad –_

\-- he will remember the people he has lost and it will not hurt.

Today is… today is not that day. Today is a bad day.

"Mike," a voice says. When he looks up and syncs up with the world outside his thoughts, he realizes they've pulled to a stop outside his apartment. He doesn't remember deciding to leave the funeral parlour, but here they are. Huh.

"Let's go upstairs," Mike decides, hauling himself out of the car. Ray shakes his hand before they part, two hands covering Mike's one in a warm gesture of sympathy before he pulls away from the curb into the early evening traffic and is gone.

Mike pulls out the beer when they get upstairs. "Mike," Harvey says warningly.

"You can't keep me from getting drunk."

"Not what I meant, rookie," Harvey says, a handful of tumblers in one hand and a bottle of his finest scotch in the other. "She deserves the best."

"I'll drink to that," Mike says bleakly. Donna, Rachel, and Trevor turn up when he's on his third, weighed down with bags of Chinese food in hand.

Blearily, beneath the distancing haze of some really fine alcohol, Mike notes that they don't seem to be matching him drink for drink. Donna takes a shot with him one round, then Trevor, then Rachel, then Harvey; never at the same time. It makes him angry, but then everything seems to – it's only when Mike's anger turns to tears, hot and uncontrollable, that someone pries the bottle from his hand and replaces it with a cool bottle of water. He crushes it in one hand, the condensation soaking his hand and keeping him anchored in the physical world.

-

Mike wakes with the mother of all hangovers and very few memories of the previous night. When he stumbles out into the small kitchenette, he finds Trevor sitting on his ratty old couch. It's the same couch Mike's known all his life, the one he watched movies with his Mom on and built thunderstorm forts with his Grandma out of. Trevor knows that, and says nothing; this is the best possible response.

"Aspirin and water are on the table, breakfast is cooking." This is why Mike loves Trevor. The smell of food should be distasteful, but the water they'd gotten into him the night before seems to have precluded the worst of the nausea. "How did you--?"

"Donna. Hey, is she--?"

"No."

"Spoiler alert, much."

Mike grins around a mouthful of phallic-shaped pancake and tries to imagine Trevor and Donna in a relationship. He's not sure the universe could handle the two of them together. "Where is--?"

"Grocery shopping. Harvey seems to think you can't survive on pancake mix and beer alone." Which, okay, there was one week in college when all the pancake keggers lined up nicely, but Harvey probably has a point.

"Are you ever going to let me finish a sentence?"

"Dude. Bros," Trevor says pointedly, and Mike bumps fists with him. There's a lot of mines lying in the field formed by the history between them, but Mike needs a friend more than he needs the moral high ground.

-

When Trevor leaves, Mike lets the calls go to voicemail for another two days before Harvey shows up on his doorstep. They stare blankly at one another until Mike steps aside to let him pass because what the hell, he ended up in Atlantic City last time and he's not opposed to that happening again. Booze, card counting, and anonymity; it's probably an improvement to how he's been spending his time lately.

"Hop in the shower, dinner will be in the oven by the time you get out."

"Shower?"

"It's an event where water, usually hot-."

"I know a shower is," Mike says irritably. The banter is reassuringly familiar, like the firm could fall and the world could end and Harvey would still be able to give Mike shit for sleeping in.

"Then you won't have any problems taking one. You smell, and I'm not feeding you until you correct it."

Mike knows when he's beat. He digs through the pile of untouched laundry to find the last clean towel, retreating with it to the bathroom.

-

"You haven't been eating," Harvey yells through the door at him. Mike assumed that leaving the room would grant him a reprieve from Harvey's best steamroller impression. Obviously this was a mistake.

"How would you know that?" Mike yells back. Harvey's right, of course, but a good lawyer never admits anything until the proof is on the table.

"Because I know _you_ ," Harvey says, like he hasn't thought through the implications of a statement like that. Like it's obvious. Like Mike is somehow the emotionally stunted one here for not knowing that. Mike's hand slips, and he ends up with an eye full of soap suds.

"…and the groceries in your fridge are practically untouched," Harvey continues. Mike slams a hand against the tile of the shower wall in lieu of a response, trying to keep his eye open long enough to rinse it out properly.

"Stop going through my things!"

"Enjoy your scurvy!"

He feels a little more human when he steps out from underneath the spray, one eye still bloodshot from Harvey and his bad timing. The t-shirt and sweatpants hanging on the back of the door are mostly clean, so he puts those on and ventures back into the kitchen.

True to his word, when he returns to the kitchen he finds Harvey juggling the components of something resembling dinner with all the finesse he usually puts into closing arguments at trial. Two steaks are broiling in the oven, a package of corn is rotating its way to inner peace in the microwave, and a bowl of potatoes is dutifully being mashed.

"Answer me this," Mike asks, coming forward to lean against the kitchen table with his arms crossed. The sight of Harvey Specter and his downright domesticity _in Mike's kitchen_ raises more than a few questions. "Did you add garlic?"

"No."

"Add garlic."

"This is my father's recipe, and there's no garlic in it. You'll eat your mashed potatoes without and like them, heathen," Harvey says, sliding a beer down the counter at him. Mike doesn't remember the last time he bought beer, which explains why he doesn't recognize the brand.

"Traditionalist."

"Charlatan."

Mike tears the label off the bottle, toying with it absentmindedly. "She liked you, you know?" God, Grammy had liked Harvey. She'd always thought he needed a hardass in his life to keep him in line.

"I liked her too," Harvey says softly. His eyes are fixed on Mike's again, seeming to measure the weight of Mike's grief. Harvey's letting Mike dictate the tone of the conversation here, bringing his own mood into line as necessary. Performing a live read like this is much trickier than sticking to a predetermined plan, but this is where skill meets art. These aren't the tactics they pull out as party tricks but the ones that make or break a career, and Mike feels strangely honoured that Harvey would put this amount of effort into closing him.

"You're not going to tell me that everything's going to be okay, are you?" Mike asks.

"Do you want me to tell you that?"

If Mike were to say yes, he's pretty sure that Harvey actually would. They've told bigger lies for flimsier reasons. He's heard it countless times since the funeral, though, fielding phone calls and sympathy cards from people that couldn't make it. He's sick of hearing that everything's going to be okay, that it's going to get better. He's not sure he wants it to. "No."

"Good, because I wasn't planning on it."

"So you did have a plan, then?"

"Rule number one. Always have a plan."

"Let's hear it, then."

Harvey jerks his head towards the coffee table, where the built-up detritus of Mike's multi-day stint as a couch potato has been cleared away, the afghan Grammy had knitted for him neatly folded over the back of the couch. In its place is a paper box, the lid tucked neatly underneath.

"You have three options for the evening. 1) I brought over the Mosby file, for which I need a loophole by Monday. 2) Spaceballs." As Mike soon discovers, Spaceballs is only the first of three DVD's that Harvey has brought over, but Harvey isn't about to play all the cards in his hand in the first round.

"And option three?" Mike prompts when nothing else is forthcoming.

"Option three is both."

"Right," Mike nods. "Makes sense. Except not really."

"Look, you're going to deal how you deal. While you do that, I'm assuming what you need most is something to keep your mind occupied."

"How can you know all that?" It's not the words but the tone that draw the parallel there for them, blurring the lines between curiosity and something deeper, more pleading. Their positions are reversed now, and it would be easy for Harvey to miss the reference. He won't, though. Mike is sure of it.

"I learned it," Harvey says. "When I was in that position myself."

Donna's hinted that Harvey lost someone important to him just before he made senior partner, but Harvey's never said anything and Mike's willingness to pump the office grapevine for information doesn't extend quite that far.

"Mother?"

"Father."

"Hence the mashed potatoes," Mike says. Harvey doesn't say anything, but he doesn't really need to. It's self-evident. "And it helped?"

"For awhile," Harvey says, braced for the question. The weight of his answer hangs in the air between them, more honest than Mike thinks he'd been expecting. They're the words of someone with motives more pure than Mike's return to work, and while cooking him dinner hits that mark pretty closely, it's always nice to have verbal evidence. "You up for it?"

"For awhile, Lord Helmet."

"May the Schwartz be with you."

-

Mike sells the condo. He doesn't take the highest offer but the one from the couple that wanted it most, a kid perched on his father's hip as they toured the room with stars in their eyes, even then well aware that the place was over their budget. He gives it to them for fifty below the asking price because she'd have wanted it that way. He donates both the proceeds from that and the remainder of his bonus to the nursing home, setting up a fund to offset the cost for low income residents. That she wouldn't have wanted; her preference would have been that he spend that money on himself.

(What can he say, lip runs in the family.)


End file.
